MySpace = BigTrouble

I have a 15-year-old stepdaughter who's had a MySpace page since she was 14 (her half-sister got one at 11), and it is MUCH more revealing and embarrassing than I expected. But stopping her from logging on—or even keeping an eye on her—is really hard.

If she makes you her friend, you can see everything that is posted on her site, like pictures and comments that people leave her. What you can't see are the comments she's leaving on other kids' pages (unless you're on their friends' lists, too).

I have told her many times that if there is anything she doesn't want her father or me to see, then she should keep it off a public website. Yet she's posted pictures of herself in a bikini, wrapped in a towel after a shower and puking in a toilet after drinking too much at a party. I told her that they were inappropriate and had her remove them. But she still continues to use foul language and talk openly about sex with her friends. I'm not saying that MySpace caused any of these problems. But teens seem to think that they're in their own world on MySpace, that just because their pages are set to private, it's safe for them to air their dirty laundry. But it's not. Who knows how these pictures and comments will come back to haunt them later?! To me this is scary stuff, and I have no idea how to convince her that what she's doing really is dangerous.